The Use of HRMS and Statistical Analysis in the Investigation of Basmati Rice Authenticity and Potential Food Fraud

There is increased concern regarding the authenticity of basmati rice throughout the world. In Britain, the Food Standard Agency found in 2005 that about half of all basmati rice sold was adulterated with other strains of long-grain rice. A proof of principle method has been established to assess the authenticity of basmati rice using ‘off the shelf’ supermarket samples with the latest advances in high resolution GCMS hardware and informatics. In this application note, Volatile compounds of interest were extracted from heated dry rice via SPME/headspace. Following a generic GC separation, detection was performed using a SYNAPT G2-Si run in HDMSE mode. Progenesis® QI, the latest OMICS informatics package from Waters®, is designed to utilise the 4-dimensional data produced during a HDMSE acquisition.